


accelerando

by realfakegamergirl



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, High School AU, M/M, Multi Chapter, Music, audition anxiety & other Fun Thigns, eventual kawoshin & shipping stuff, hopefully the first of many many chapters, i hope this turns out well, shinji is a high school cello player, this could get long af, unlike the rest of my attempts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2762711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realfakegamergirl/pseuds/realfakegamergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>**NANOWRIMO HIATUS**<br/>He tried to keep the tears from escaping, but they had been gathering all day, and now they queued up at his eyes, falling in a steady stream down his face. Then they gave up waiting in line, and all pushed at the exits at once like a mob, and he found himself quite suddenly wracked with sobs.<br/>I’m not good for anything, Shinji realised with a dull sense of numbness, and at that moment it seemed to him that he’d never believed anything so sincerely in his whole life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i always really like the really long multi-chapter AU's, but never got a good one off the ground. so i decided to try one!  
> this is pretty heavy on stringed-instrument stuff and i tried my best to do them justice but i'm a wind player, so if some glaring innacuracy stands out, if you could let me know that'd be great.  
> gahhh anyway im hoping that this will be a good au, this is just the first chapter, expect more, i hope, if it seems like this is good enough to continue with. it won't focus solely on music auditions though, that's just kind of this first chapter. anyway. here it is!

The auditorium was cramped with students, and hot and sticky with sound. Instrument cases lay across the worn theater seats, propped up on the chairs or flat against the concrete floor. Cellos and basses were like extra people, taking up seats, sitting and standing where their owners had propped them. Violins crescendoed and then dropped off into the midst of the sound. The players themselves sat in the theater seats or huddled around music stands.

There had to be at least a hundred, thought Shinji morosely. And there were even more who would arrive later: the auditions for the regional honors orchestra ran all day.  
He watched and listened silently as a viola player near him began a cadenza, the notes shining in peals as they sprang to life and danced off the strings.

A moment later, the cacophony dipped in volume. One of the coordinators had found a microphone and was calling for violins, audition numbers seventy-three through eighty.  
Shinji felt a harsh tap on his shoulder.

“Hey Shinji!” said a violinist with bright red hair. She bounced on the balls of her feet, holding the instrument and bow excitedly.

Shinji murmured a vague greeting in return, but it was lost in the roar of scales, arpeggios, and solos. Asuka appeared not to notice. She instead said, “My audition number just got called, so wish me luck! I’ll meet you later in the lobby?” Actually, she kind of shouted it.

“Good luck,” said Shinji loudly, tightening his grip on his cello bow.

Asuka waved goodbye and flounced off to where a growing queue of hopeful violinists had formed at the door.

Shinji took a deep breath and looked at the sheet of paper with his audition number: Cello number 78. He didn’t know how many cellists were auditioning, nor had anyone given him the exact number of cellists accepted into the honors orchestra. But he knew enough to know that statistically, the odds were not in his favor.

They rarely were.

Just looking at the cellists around him sent Shinji’s mind reeling.

He saw all of them, playing- heard snatches of their scales and melodies, their long tones and tune ups- as they bounced off the auditorium walls. They all looked so confident, so talented, each one, in their own way: capable and self-assured. Shinji reasoned that they had to be self assured about something, that the smug confidence they exuded had to come from Somewhere. He watched a girl play something rom sheet music on a wire folding stand. Her hair was pulled back in a sensible ponytail. Her face was set in a steady concentration as snatches of her etude reflected off of the walls, the chairs, and the other people and instruments. It tantalized Shinji, tickling questions and doubts in his mind. She’s better than me. Look at her, look at the way she grips the fingerboard. She’s been studying technique, just like me, and I’m a fool to think I’m on a higher level than she is. Fool.

He could be looking at the principal cellist for the entire region, for all he knew. There was no way he’d make it in.

“Cellos seventy-two through eighty-one,” said a voice at the microphone.

Drawing in a shuddering breath, Shinji gathered up his cello and made his way past the auditorium seats. It was no easy feat, navigating the aisles with a cello when every other person also possessed an instrument, but he managed to somehow find himself at the door without having damaged anything. He found the coordinator who was meant to lead the group to the audition room.

“What’s your number?” asked the coordinator, a tall, bespectacled woman who was clutching a clipboard.

“S- s- seventy- eight,” managed Shinji.

Another student approached them: their face was unreadable. Then another, and another. All of them whose faces were blank or daringly stony. Soon all nine cellists had assembled. None of them looked nervous. None of them looked unprepared, or like they were about to puke. None of them looked too pale. None of them looked like they didn’t know how to hold a bow.

“Is this all of you?” the coordinator asked. She did a quick head count. “Good. Follow me.”

Shinji trailed along at the end of the line, noting the way every musician walked and carried their instruments.

He tried to remember what his teacher had taught him about auditioning. Deep breaths. Don’t worry about your competitors. Just go in there and play. Shinji sucked in a breath, and let it out. The coordinator beckoned the small group into a hallway.

The auditions were being held at a high school in the next district over. Shinji observed the unfamiliar classroom doors, the posters in the hallways bearing the insignia of the other school.

One poster reminded the students of an anti-drug policy; another preached the dress code; a third advertised a community service hours club. The group followed the guide down a corridor and took a left turn, where they all paused next to a large student mural depicting an ocean reef, with the colorful fish swimming through drifting seaweed.

“Can I have everyone’s audition forms, please?” asked the coordinator.

As he handed over his form, Shinji noted with some embarrassment that his was wrinkled and slightly damp with the sweat from his palms. He glanced surreptitiously at the other students as they handed over their papers; the sheets were smooth and immaculate, as if fresh off the printer.

There were three doors in a row here, all leading to different classrooms. Given the volume of each instrument that auditioned, the auditions were split into three rooms, each with a different panel of judges, and each with a separate caption: solo, scales, and sight reading. Each student would perform their solo, an etude by Hayden. Then they would play their scales in the second room. After that they would read an unfamiliar piece of music and be judged on their sight reading skills.

Shinji knew this; he’d been preparing for this audition for months. The regional orchestra wasn’t just a three-day clinic, he reflected as the cellist began to play from behind a closed door. It was a status symbol; in the previous years, he’d witnessed the elite, the best and brightest of his school’s orchestra pack themselves up into an activity bus, laughing and talking excitedly, as they piled into the bus and drove away for a weekend. Making the audition made you special, important; it meant you weren’t a failure. It meant a blurb in the school newspaper, a pat on the back from all your friends; it meant you were important; good enough. He allowed himself, for a moment, to feel the joy and euphoria of someone who’d succeeded. Principal cellist, the best in the region. The congratulations of his classmates and the approval of his father. “Congratulations,” they would say. As he imagined the scene, Shinji’s heart swelled with ephemeral pride, but he forced it to deflate, as if someone was stepping on his chest and squeezing out all the air. He hadn't won this yet.

Don’t get your hopes up,

Number seventy-seven was first to go in, and entered the first audition room.

Don't get your hopes up. There's lots of better cellists in the region. There's no way you'll place that high even if you get a chair at all.

He listened to the vibrato in number seventy-seven’s solo. They slid from one note to the next. He gritted his teeth. I've got to play that well, too, he thought. I've got to play better than that.

Number seventy-seven finished.

"Seventy-eight?" asked the coordinator.

Shinji nodded and carried his cello into the room.

The door closed behind him with a heavy thud.

It was an English classroom, but Shinji didn’t notice the grammar posters on the wall or the cardboard cutout of Shakespeare. At first, the only details he took in were the chair and stand in front of him, and the solo music on the stand.

Deep breaths, he remembered to tell himself. His hands were shaking.

As he took a step forward, Shinji noticed more details: the clock on the wall was broken, frozen indefinitely at two-fourteen. It must have stopped working right when school was ending, or in the middle of the night when the building was dark and empty, and no one was around to hear it tick for the last time, or to hear the silence that followed its final moments.

A fish tank sat on a table. Inside, a goldfish swam, unconcerned with the performance Shinji was about to make. I’ve got to do this perfectly, he told himself. One mistake, and I’ll be out of the running. He sat down in the hard metal school issued chair, resting his cello’s endpin on the floor.

The judges sat at a table in the back of the classroom, scoring sheets and mugs of coffee splayed out in front of them. There were three: all in mussed dress shirts and all looking tired.

They’ve heard seventy-seven cellists already, Shinji realized. I’ve got to impress them, make myself stand out. “Are you…” One of the judges looked down at a notecard and straightened her glasses. “Shinji Ikari?”

Shinji nodded, and swallowed.

“You can begin when you’re ready,” said the judge.

Shinji wondered what Asuka would say to him now, if she could see him. Don’t be such a bundle of nerves all the time, idiot! she’d say. Pull yourself together!

Shinji feared it was too late. He was a bundle of nerves, and he was beginning to fray and unravel at the edges.

Shinji drew his bow and began to play.

It wasn't even a full measure in that he realized he'd counted off too quickly. Frantically, he tried to slow off the tempo to the andante where it should have been, and barely succeeded- just in time to trip up and down a row of sixteenth notes.

Oh crap, he realized, now I can't make any more mistakes, or else I'm done for. He struggled through the next few measures. None of the notes sounded beautiful the way they should have. Shit, he realized, I forgot to use vibrato on this bit. And I worked so hard on that vibrato!

Despairingly, he plunged into the next phrase, and the next, and the next. He stumbled, fell over his notes- the bow slipped- he pushed on, each phrase choppier and more desperate than the next. Hours of practicing with a metronome disappeared in wisps of smoke as the tempo fell apart; countless evenings spent honing his tone rendered themselves useless.  
  
Finally, Shinji played the final note and released it, the room echoing faintly with his final sound.

“Thank you,” said the judge.

Shinji stayed frozen in his seat for a moment. Everything around him seemed real and fake and utterly, ultimately cruel and unimportant. The fish swam in its tank, bubbling unconcerned with the event that had just taken place. He smelled coffee from one of the judge’s mugs. The clock stayed frozen.

A second passed- Two, three, four, then five, each of them longer than the next.

“Um,” said one of the judges, and cleared her throat. “You’re allowed to leave."

“Right,” said Shinji. “Sorry.” He left.

The hallway outside remained how it had been before: quiet, with only the small footsteps of someone hurrying down the hall with stack of audition papers.

The footsteps decrescendoed away and it was just him, the other students, and the fish mural.

None of them would fuck up this badly, Shinji thought, looking at the other student.s They’d all play their best, they wouldn't make dumb mistakes.

A large sea turtle waved at him from its spot, painted on the wall. “Alright, the judges in the scales room will be out in a moment.”

“Right,” said Shinji. Scales.

Maybe if he made his scales and sightreading perfect… maybe if… just maybe..

The door opened, and Shinji walked in.

“You can start when you’re ready,” said the judge.

And Shinji tried again. He knew scales; he knew them like the back of his hand: but they still suffered, didn’t flow like he used to be able to make them do. THe high notes were lackluster and the low notes were too strident. There was no shape. Nothing that would set him apart from the rest, as his teacher had urged him.  
And then there was sight reading. For one minute, Shinji silently analyzed twelve measures of music, and, when he thought he’d learned it, or learned it as well as one could in a minute), he played it- tripping over simple notes and rhythms.

Remember to use dynamics and phrasing during your sight reading, his teacher had told him. It’ll really set you apart from the other contestants.  
He walked out of the sightreading room, numb. It was over. It was over, this stupid audition he’d lost sleep over, the one he’d been preparing for for months… all that effort, wasted and dead.

It’s fine, he told himself. I didn’t care, anyway. It’s just a stupid competition. It didn’t matter.

He couldn’t walk very quickly with a cello, but after five minutes he found the sign that read PRACTICE AND WARM UP ROOM---> and followed it. The quiet din buzzed from behind the auditorium’s wooden doors, and grew louder as he approached.

“Oh, hi, Rei.” Rei, a friend from school, was standing outside the entrance, as if waiting for him. She held a viola and bow. She looked, as always, perfect, in an ethereal kind ofway. Her dress was perfectly ironed, not a wrinkle, not a single blue hair on her head out of place.

 

“Asuka is waiting for you outside. She told me to tell you.”

“Thank you,” said Shinji. He went back into the auditorium to collect his belongings. He put his cells back in its case, and gathered up his bags.

Before turning around to leave, Shinji took one last look at the students in the auditorium. Their melodies soured in his ears. All of them looked… okay. Not how he felt. He left the auditorium, shutting its heavy wooden doors with a thud. They muffled the sound of a hundred tune ups, warm ups, final runs of scales.

“There you are,” said Asuka, running up to him on the curb outside the school building. “Ugh, you took so long! Come on, the car’s over here. Misato’s waiting.”

Shinji followed her. Asuka swung her violin case jauntily as she walked. “Quickly! It’s cold.”

The blue car was parked across the lot. Asuka claimed the shotgun seat, and Shinji climbed in the back, taking up one seat while his cello sat propped in the other.

Misato was in the drivers’ seat, still in her work uniform.

“Were you waiting long?” asked Asuka.

“No, I just got here.” MIsato steered the car out of the parking lot. “How did it go?”

“I think I did really well,” said Asuka. “I was listening to the guy in front of me, and he had to start over. It was hilarious- I nearly laughed out loud! Like, if you’re going to fuck up that badly, don’t even show up. And I thought the sight reading was really easy, too. Like geez, give us something more challenging, to weed out the idiots who can’t play it right, y’know?”

Shinji sunk low in his seat. “How about you, Shinji?” asked Misato, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. “How’d your audition go?”

 

Shinji shrugged, and sank even lower. “I dunno.”

Misato gave him an inquisitive stare. “You don't know?”

Shinji looked down at his feet. “It doesn’t really matter.”

Misato stopped prodding after that, and Asuka’s chatter soon filled the car and suffocated all else.

Dinner was a subdued and hastily prepared meal of various instant foods. Misato had insisted on preparing that night’s meal, and Shinji had been too exhausted to argue.

“So, Shinji,” said Asuka, as Shinji cleaned off dishes and Misato opened a can of beer, “do you think you made it?”

“No,” said Shinji. He finished doing the dishes and curtly turned to exit the apartment.

“Why not?” asked Misato. “Did it not go well?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” said Shinji, and walked quickly to his room.

Later that night, Shinji lay in his bed, gripping his tape player and staring blankly at his wall. The events of the day looped over and over in his head.

The audition, the classroom, the judges, the awful, awful notes. It hadn’t even been music. It had just been noise, ugly, ugly noise.

Asuka, saying, If you’re going to fuck up that badly, just don’t show up at all!

He tried to keep the tears from falling down his face, but they had been gathering all day, and now they queued up at his eyes, falling in a steady stream down his face. Then they gave up waiting in line, and all pushed at the exits at once like a mob, and he found himself quite suddenly wracked with sobs.

I’m not good for anything, Shinji realised with a dull sense of numbness, and at that moment it seemed to him that he’d never believed anything so sincerely in his whole life.


	2. chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some fic authors put playlists or music in the notes for people to listen to while reading or as a "this is what i listened to while writing" thing so here are some youtube links
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGQLXRTl3Z0  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEGOihjqO9w
> 
> anyway! sorry this took so long and stuff, but it's winter break now so somehow i managed to finish it. this chapter. idk really exactly where the story's going to go. but i hope it goes somewhere good. also, that you like this chapter. hopefully this chapter will have less typos! google docs spellcheck is really weird, and this story is of course kept on my large google doc inconspicuously titled "fanfiction, please don't look at this" & they have really inconsistent spellcheck? and i don't know why? anyway. im hoping this is okay. i don't really want to look at it anymore :/ but it's christmas eve!! merry christmas eve! or just have a nice wednesday, if christmas isn't your thing.

Everything in between the alarm clock’s monotone blaring and the trek up the stairs of the entrance to the school was a large blur, as if he were floating. But no, floating would be much more relaxing. It was a dreadful slog, like falling through a forest canopy and hitting every branch on his way down.

Shinji had never been a morning person, but today was worse than ever. Despite the grogginess in his head yelling at the world to shut the fuck up, one way or the other he ended up here, at his high school's entrance. The sky was still dark as it fought to shed its last remnants of night, and the air was clear and cold: a brisk day.

Behind him, horns blared on the streets. Shinji trudged up the stairs and into the main entrance, where he took a left and walked down a corridor to where the music department was located.

Asuka ran ahead of him and caught up with some of her friends. Shinji stayed behind, and trudged towards the music room. There was no need to go quickly. He wanted to delay it.

The music room was a gaping wide room, shared by both the band and orchestra. A budget-stretched percussion section littered the back of the room, and trophies from old band festivals stood lined up on dusty shelves.

Students mulled around with instrument cases, chatting in small groups, gathering in circles.  
  
Shinji didn’t really have a reason to be here- he had no instrument to drop off, because he used a school cello at school and kept his own at home- but he lingered anyway, as he always did. Sometimes he spoke with Rei in these precious morning minutes, and sometimes he lingered in the fringes of Asuka’s circle of friends. They were all nice enough, but while he was close with Asuka, he wasn’t part of that group.

Today, though, the chatter seemed unbearable, and it pressed down on Shinji like a heavy and suffocating blanket. He looked at the clock. Fifteen minutes till class was set to start. Maybe he’d leave now, and get to class easily, and listen to music on headphones till the bell rang. It didn’t seem like a bad idea.

He made a beeline for the door. Rei was there.

“Hello, Rei,” said Shinji. Reflexively, he said, in a dull voice tinged with a bitterness he tried to swallow: “How was your audition.”

Rei shrugged, and stared at him with her piercing red eyes. “You’re upset,” she said.

“Well,” said Shinji. “I, uh.” He looked down at his feet. “Yeah.”

Rei gave him a questioning gaze.

“I’m fine, really,” said Shinji, “I just… I’m a little bummed out. About the audition. But. But it’s… it’s nothing.” He shrugged. It wasn’t nothing, and they both knew it.

“You put tooo much stock in these things,” said Rei flatly. “It’s not healthy.”

Shinji shrugged. “I suppose,” he said. “I just. I dunno.”

The first bell rang. Rei left, and the clumps of students began to dissolve and disperse.

Shinji turned and left through the back exit, but as he was walking out the door, he remembered with a start that his first class was being held not in their classroom, but in thelibrary that day.: he was headed in the entirely wrong direction.

Turning around once more and heading the other way, he traversed the music room and stepped outside into the hallway, where he accidentally barreled into another person, tripped, and nearly lost his footing.

The other figured dropped a large folder of papers, which scattered all over the floor.

“S-s- sorry,” Shinji muttered, and, without thinking, dropped to his knees and began picking up papers from the floor, scooping them up into a neat stack.

The other person did the same. “Don't worry about it,” Shinji heard.

“B-but, I made your papers fall- I’m sorry-”

“Ah, it’s no worry. They weren’t in an sort of order, anyway.”

Shinji glanced at the papers in his hand; they were all sheet music. Piano music, a second look told him. Beethoven.

He met the stranger’s eyes as he handed back the papers. Red eyes. Like Rei, he thought.

The music had now been consolidated to a disheveled stack in the red-eyed stranger’s arms. Shinji got to his feet. The stranger did the same.

He looked to be a student, about Shinji’s age, but his appearance was strikingly different from the average student. The red eyes Shinji had noticed before were set in a pale, angular face, which was framed by grey-white hair. The boy was a few inches taller than him. He said,

“Thank you.”

“Ah,” said Shinji. “Uh, no problem.”

What’s your name?” asked the stranger. “Sorry, I’m new here, so I don’t know anybody yet.”

“Shinji Ikari,” he said. “Who- uh, who are you, then?”

“Kaworu Nagisa,” the white haired boy replied. “Do you play music here?” He gestured towards the music room door from which Shinji had just emerged.

“Yes,” said Shinji. “I play cello.” I guess, he thought morosely. “I’m… I’m not very good or anything, but. Um.”  
He nodded at the stack of papers. “You play piano, then?”

Kaworu nodded, smiling widely. “It’s a beautiful instrument. As is cello, of course.”

Shinji nodded, unsure of what to say.

“Is your next class that way?” asked Kaworu, nodding down the hallway in the direction Shinji had just been heading.

Shinji nodded. “Are you going that way, too?”

Kaworu nodded. “I think so. That’s where the library is, right?”

“Yes, it’s right on my way.”

“Let’s go that way, then,” said Kaworu, and together the two strolled down the hallway. They weren’t late yet- students still mingled and lingered in the stairwells and next to lockers before going to class.

“So what are these auditions I keep hearing everyone talking about?” Kaworu obviously meant it as a conversational question, but Shinji stiffened at the innocent mention.  
He explained the stipulations of the honors orchestra, and the prestige and status it brought to all gifted enough to successfully audition into it.

“Oh,” said Kaworu, “Did you audition?”

“Yes,” said Shinji. “I didn’t do well, though.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re a lovely musician nonetheless.”

Right, thought Shinji, but underneath his initial bitter reaction was a pleasant glow of surprise that someone would say something so nice to him. He just doesn't know me well enough yet to realize how awful I really am, he decided.

They stopped at the classroom that matched the number printed onto Kaworu’s schedule, and then Shinji trekked to the library alone, seating himself with the rest of his class just before the bell rang.

The day passed, a steady familiar drone of time, with the bells like a metronome orchestrating the parts of the day and dividing it into sections.

Kaworu’s kind voice and genuine smile stuck with Shinji, crept through the spaces in his mind when he let it wander during a lecture. He met up with Rei for lunch. Both of themate in an empty classroom. Neither said anything, and their meal took on a companionable silence.

“Who was that person you were talking to?” Rei asked suddenly, quietly, her words easing comfortably out of the still air and rising naturally from the white noise of the heating systems.

“His name’s Kaworu Nagisa. He’s new here,” said Shinji. “he plays piano. Why?”

Rei shrugged. “It’s not often you talk to new people.”

“That’s not true!” Shinji said.

“Is it?” asked Rei.

“You make it sound like I’m some kind of introvert without a lot of friends! Which I’m not.”

“You’re not?” Rei’s generally neutral voice was tinged with something like surprised, but Shinji couldn’t tell if it was feigned or legitimate.

Shinji sighed in exasperation. “Fine.”

Orchestra was the last class of the day. Normally, Shinji would have looked forward to this class, but today he dreaded it. The teacher spent half of it asking how everyone's auditions went. The cellists on either side of him whispered excitedly about how they thought they’d done. Shinji felt a strange sense of alienation from his schoolmates, eventhe handful of which he felt comfortable calling ‘friends’.

Everyone felt confident- everyone thought they had done well. Everyone was hopeful and excited. It was all Shinji could do not to visibly sulk. Instead, he focused intently onlooking at the notes of a Bach cello suite he had been working on, pressing the fingerboard and twitching his hand in a silent mimicry of the bow.

“And the results will be up tonight, so you can check those on the website,” the director finally said, and then went back into her office to engage in a long conversation with a school administrator, leaving the rest of the class to talk and play their instruments.

“Hey Shinji, how was your audition?” someone asked.

Shinji shrugged. “Eh,” he said. “I probably didn’t make it.”

 

He concentrated on the Bach piece for the rest of the period.

When the bell rang, students packed up their instruments and left. Shinji stayed, though: Misato always picked him up from school on her way home from work. He had a good half hour to himself.

Asuka ran off to a student council meeting, and soon the room was empty save but for the sounds of Shinji’s cello.

He soon finished running through the Bach piece, and he sat in silence for a moment as the last notes subsided quietly, soaking into the acoustic paneling.

Shinji put the bow back on the music stand and sat for a full minute in the silence, wondering if he was good enough and if so, then why did he suck so much? And what was even the point?

“That was beautiful.”

Shinji nearly jumped out of his seat looking for the source of the voice: he found it at the now-ajar front entrance of the room.

Kaworu, the boy from earlier, was standing there and grinning widely at him.

“Well, um… thanks,” managed Shinji.

“No really, it was beautiful! That was Bach, I presume?”

“Uh, yeah. Cello Suite #1 Prelude.”

“I thought so!” Kaworu took long strides toward Shinji and sat down in the chair next to him, asking as he did so, “Is it alright if I sit here?”

“Um, okay,” said Shinji.

“Do you always practice here after school?” asked Kaworu. “Or are there other groups that practice here?”

“I do usually,” admitted Shinji, “just until, uh, my guardian picks me up. But on Wednesdays the jazz band plays here and I have to find somewhere else.”

“Is the school’s jazz band any good?” Kaworu wanted to know, and Shinji replied:

“I don’t know- I’ve never heard them play.”

“Well, we’ll have to go to one of their concerts sometime,” insisted Kaworu.

Shinji was shocked by the bluntness. To suggest they go to a concert together? They’d barely known each other ten minutes.

“Um, okay,” said Shinji. “I don’t know when their concerts are, though.”

“Well, we’ll find out,” said Kaworu, and then, “Say, are students allowed to use that piano?”

“Yes, lots of people play it.” The beaten, out of tune upright piano was used often- people pecked out melodies between classes, tapped old recital pieces on the keys, or learned the chords to pop songs. It was used in the band sometimes, for music theory lessons, and in the jazz band.

"Would I disturb you if I did?" asked Kaworu. "You were practicing earlier, and..."

"Oh no, it's fine," said Shinji. "I think I'd rather hear you play."

Kaworu got up and walked to the piano, and sat down on the dilapidated school chair that served where a finer establishment might have a piano bench.

He flitted his fingers over the keys. Where any untrained hand had done this, it would have made dissonant noise, but Kaworu seemed with this idle stroke to be eliciting hidden melodies, coaxing something out of the heart of the piano that had been hidden there. "It's a little out of tune," he remarked, but it didn't seem to bother him.

Shinji watched as Kaworu coaxed another, and then another flying riff out of the instrument. He seemed only to brush the keys absentmindedly, and yet the short phrases were full of intent.

Then, without warning, Kaworu launched into a dramatic and haunting series of chords, which, as the song progressed, became recognizable to Shinji as Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #2.

The notes blended like droplets in a stream, which became a river, the flow pushing and pulling and swelling, filling the room with music. Shinji lost track of time, enraptured by the song.

Some time later (but how much time?), Asuka burst into the room loudly.

“Shinji!” she said, “it’s time to go. You usually wait for me out front. Why aren’t you?”

“Uhh,” said Shinji. “Um. Sorry.”

The last strains of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2 came to a stop as Kaworu looked up from the piano. “Oh, are you leaving?” he asked. “I’m sorry to have kept you.”

“Oh, it was no worry at all,” said Shinji, “You, uh, you play beautifully!”

“Will I see you tomorrow?” asked Kaworu.

“Yes!” said Shinji, quickly packing up his things and packing away his cello from where it had been resting by his chair.

Asuka tapped her foot impatiently. “Come on, Shinji,” she said. “I don’t have all day.”

“Okay, I’m ready,” said Shinji. “Um, bye Kaworu, it was nice meeting you.”

Kaworu waved from where he sat at the piano, and Shinji trailed after Asuka.

“Sorry for taking so long,” he muttered.

“You didn’t keep me waiting long,” said Asuka.

Misato was waiting at the curb. “There you two are,” she said. “What took you so long?”

“I was talking to the new student,” Shinji said as the car pulled out from the school entrance. “Erm, he was playing piano.”

“He looked absolutely smitten,” announced Asuka smugly. “When’s the wedding?”

“Oh my god, Asuka, I’ve barely spoken to the guy. Didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to make friends.” Hastily changing the subject, he said, “How was work, Misato?”

“Same as always,” said Misato. “But worse. I’ll be staying late tomorrow, so you two will have to take the train home.” She yawned.

Shinji and Asuka knew very little about what their guardian actually did at NERV, except that the corporation was very powerful, very large, and very important- and that Misato was a well-ranking officer there.

They arrived at the apartment, and Shinji shut himself in his room to do homework. The melody to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2 ran through his head as he plowed through math problems and a history essay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay! so, um. update schedule. probably once every month or so or every few weeks. I'm really bad with scheduling/kind of busy so expect one by... the end.. of January? januaries are always so sucky & bad but we'll see. yeah.  
> the point is I suck at sticking to a schedule but I won't abandon this fic. probably. 
> 
> anyway thanks for reading. constructive criticism is welcome!! I mean it. Be brutal. Tear apart my writing if you thought it sucked. I'll appreciate it. really. you have my permission to be honest.


	3. chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a shortish chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i said i'd get the next chapter out "by the end of january". and i procrastinated a lot on it so yeah here it is, the end of january!  
> also, i tried out for all-district for the fifth year in a row and i actually friggin made it this time!! yeah! i'm really pumped, the clinic is tomorrow (well technically today, it's midnight ehehe) and i made it! i also made the jazz band! i never thought i'd actually make the band but i did! aah i just really felt the need to share my band kid rambles with y'all :0 "y'all" pertaining to whoever's reading this. hi, whoever's reading this.
> 
> anyway this is a really short chapter i'm sorry ;_; nevertheless i do hope i'll be able to crank out another one soon.

Still half-asleep, Shinji trudged into the music room the next morning. He’d spent far too long on an essay the night before, and was mid-yawn when he saw a shock of white hair in one of the nether reaches of the area. Remembering with clarity the strange pianist from yesterday, he meandered over to where Kaworu was standing.

He waved Shinji over, looking him right in the eyes. Shinji was struck once more by how intent his expression was: his red eyes stared straight into him. Surely they would have had to know each other for much longer- know each other much more fully- to pack such meaning into a glance. And yet, here was this almost-stranger, this new acquaintance, looked at him as one might look at a very old friend. As if they were sharing some vast and terrible secret. Which, as far as Shinji knew, they weren’t.

“Good morning,” Kaworu told him cheerfully. He was holding a large book of sheet music.

“Good morning,” Shinji replied.

“How are you?” Kaworu asked kindly.

“Ah, I’m alright,” said Shinji. He shrugged. “What about you?”

Kaworu grinned widely. He had a ridiculous grin, Shinji decided, a genuine smile. “i’m doing quite well, thank you.”

They stood together quietly for a minute, watching the activity in the music room: the swirls and eddies of the slow-moving tide of students: the instrument cases being hoisted onto shelves, the students’ tired frames weighed down with bags full of books. The whisper of audition results being posted.

Not wanting to hear about the stupid auditions anymore, Shinji decided to try and strike up some sort of conversation. This was what people did, right? Made small talk with strangers whose eyes looked as if they were sharing secrets. Ignored the fact that it kind of hurt not to be good enough. Stuff like that.

“So when did you move here?” asked Shinji.

“Ah, it’s been about a week,” was the reply. “Last Tuesday, I believe. It’s a nice little apartment, not far from here. I think I'll be happy there."

Shinji nodded- unsure of what to say to this but desperate to keep the conversation going- to not lose contact- to cling to this budding friendship instead of letting it trail off into an awkward, apologetic shuffling of feet, clearing of throats and mumbling.

"You, uh. You play the piano really well." The words stumbled out of his mouth half-formed, a confused jumble. "I really liked listening to you. Yesterday."

Kaworu gave his genuine, happy smile again. "Thank you, Shinji. And you played cello wonderfully, too."

"Ah, thanks," Shinji mumbled, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

The bell rang.

\---

Shinji watched in fascination as Kaworu's fingers flitted up and down the keyboard, pressing out the shapes of chords and flying back and forth in graceful cadenzas.  
He'd pulled up a chair next to him so as to watch better- Kaworu hadn't minded in the least- and was lost in admiration.

The piece finished, and Kaworu looked up from the piano. Shinji, unsure of what to do, simply said, "You're... you're amazing."

Kaworu replied by saying: “It brings me great joy to play piano.”

“I think you’ve made the piano happy,” said Shinji, barely choking on the half-formed thought.

“Hm?”

“Sorry- no- well, what I mean is. It’s this old piano, and it’s out of tune and gets pushed around and people like to tap the keys when they walk by- and all I meant was, I think you made it happy. With your playing.”

Kaworu smiled again, and Shinji caught himself marveling at what a nice smile it was. “I’d like to think you’re right.” He brushed his long fingers across the keys, and a cadenza fell into place. Like magic, Shinji thought, fascinated. “Do you play piano?”

Shinji shook his head. “No, I never learned any instruments beside cello.”

“And you are wonderful at that.”

Shinji shrugged.

“Why so modest? You’ve obviously spent lots of time practicing, and you sound beautiful.”

Beautiful was not an adjective that people had ever associated with Shinji, nor was it one that he associated with himself. He felt himself flush a slightly deeper pink. “Well, um, thanks.”

 

“Is it because of those auditions?”

Too honest, thought Shinji dully. Was he really that transparent? “I guess so. They’re pretty highly honored here at my school, so I just kind of… always saw it as this standard of, of capability. And. And stuff.” He trailed off. Results had been posted outside of the music room door, and students had crowded around to see. Asuka had been dismayed to see that she'd made only fifth chair- "Honestly! Only fifth? The system must be broken!"- and Shinji had quietly taken note of his place among the fortieth and forty-first alternates.  
“It’s understandable,” said Kaworu. “You know I still think you’re very capable, though. One bad audition shouldn’t define you. And isn’t there next year, too?”

Shinji nodded. “Next year,” he said. “I’ll try to put it out of my mind for now.”

Kaworu smiled kindly at him, and traced out a shifting run of notes.

\---

Shinji walked into the nearly-empty science classroom the following day to find not only Rei there, but Kaworu. Rei was saying something to Kaworu: quiet and terse, the way she always appeared. He wondered vaguely what they had been saying to each other.

“Oh!” Kaworu looked up. “Hello, Shinji.”

“Hello, Kaworu. Hello, Rei.” Shinji sat down at the table next to Rei, who murmured a greeting in return.

“You don’t mind if I eat here, do you?” Kaworu asked.

“Oh- of course,” said Shinji. “I mean. I don’t mind at all.”

“Thank you. There aren’t many quiet places to eat.”

“It’s a loud school,” acknowledged Shinji, and began to unpack his lunch.

Kaworu turned his head to look around the classroom. “This is a science classroom,” he confirmed. “It’s… it’s very nice.”

It wasn’t what Shinji would have thought to describe as nice. The walls were heavy cinderblock, covered in an austere and thick layer of paint the color of yogurt that had just turned. The tiled floor alternated a similarly dismal shade of off-white and dark green in a checkered pattern.

The room was lined with wooden counters topped with sinks, made of the same black material as the tables, and above those were shelves full of beakers and test tubes and Erlenmeyer flasks. The shelf doors were decorated with drawings of planets by some long-since-graduated astronomy class. Some bore the scribbles of school-issued colored pencils and carelessness; other planets were adorned with carefully marked whorls and craters, orbited by tiny cut-out moons. On top of the shelves were craft projects gathering dust: brightly fluorescent DNA nucleotides, cell models of all shapes and sizes, ribosomes, rats, Golgi bodies, mitochondria. Styrofoam solar system models boasted neat little signs on which some student had once carefully printed “Not To Scale”. In the far corner, near a window, a potted plant had spread its coiling creepers in every direction, inching along the dusty counter, searching. Searching for what? The only piece of earth it had was in the flowerpot: the rest was several meters below the second-floor window.

The lights were off, and while the three sat in darkness, it was a pleasant darkness: nothing like the florescent lights that ran in austere formations from wall to wall on the ceiling, and which now had been turned off. The light that streamed through the window was from the sun, and as it spread into the classroom, it did so lackadaisically.  
“I see what you mean,” said Shinji after a moment. “It is nice. I never noticed before.”

Kaworu was gazing, entranced, at a photograph of the moon, and Shinji found himself making a detailed study in his mind of the way the light filtered through his feather-white hair. And how the light framed those peculiar cheekbones, and framed and illuminated his eyes.

“Do you ever feel like…?” started Kaworu.

“Like what?”

“Never mind.” Kaworu shook his head. “It was a silly thought.”

“Really, go on,” said Shinji. “I mean.. unless you’d rather-”

“I was just thinking. My whole life, I always felt like I was kind of… drifting. Not quite sticking anywhere. Never feeling attached to much except music. I’d never found a purpose.” He paused and sighed. “I think I might find a purpose soon. Like I’m drifting back down to Earth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have you ever heard a brass band perform Jupiter by Holst? it is an 11/10 listening experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvDZXUbljuM
> 
> as always, please tell me what you thought. i'm completely serious when i say i welcome constructive criticism of any type as it will help me grow as a writer. so, don't hold back! be brutal!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long!! wow!! kinda forgot about this and then worked on it in chunks? how long has it been? months? months. it's been a long time. I released 2 EPs and started dating my boyfriend in between last chapter and this chapter. but the kawoshin fic is not dead!!! not yet!! I'll stop rambling and post it now. If there are any weird paragraph spacing issues please tell me... google docs is kind of mean about it

The regional orchestra event took place over a weekend stretching from the middle of a Friday to a concert on Sunday. Asuka took great pleasure in reminding Shinji of this on every possible opportunity: that she was able to spend an entire weekend away from his stupid face, and that she would enjoy every moment of it, and that he should be careful not to do anything too dismally stupid while she was gone, or she’d have to come back to clean up the carnage.

“Would you rather I have made the audition, so you could keep an eye on me?” Shinji deadpanned once over breakfast.

Asuka balked. “And have you ruin my image? Are you stupid or something?”

Shinji nodded and sighed through all of this every time it came into conversation. As the event was two hours away, Asuka and the other people from their school would be staying in a hotel nearby. 

“And I’m rooming with Hikari,” she continued in the car on the auspicious Friday morning. In addition to her schoolbag, she had packed a large suitcase and two duffel bags: the bus would be leaving from school. “It’s going to be soooo great. Too bad you have to miss it,” she told Shinji.

“Thought you wanted me at home so I couldn’t embarrass you?” he countered, stifling a yawn. 

“Idiot! You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Sure. Okay.”

The music room that day was rife with suitcases and travel forms as the handful of lucky, talented students clustered around the orchestra director. As he walked in, Shinji wondered where Kaworu was: the now- familiar shock of white hair was nowhere to be seen. Where was he? Was he at school? He probably had other places to be, Shinji reflected. Other friends who he talked to. Why wouldn’t he? Shinji looked around for someone else to stand by but then realized he didn’t feel much like talking to anyone. 

He ended up not wanting to stand, feeling too conspicuous in the clusters and little throngs, sitting wedged between some sort of large lump of an instrument case- one of the marching band ones- and what appeared to be a really terribly large trombone case. 

There they were, the elite, the talented, the good, and here he was in a corner, sulking. He realized he was scowling, and felt wretched for it. A wretched creature sitting in the wretched corner and hiding in a shadow and watching and wishing and watching and wishing. Asuka was laughing loudly and making some snide remark. The crew seemed to be in high spirits. Shinji sunk deeper into the low brass and wondered if he could disappear, maybe enfold himself into the dented metal for a while and become one with the smell of. Uh. Whatever it was that old brass instruments smelled like. He turned up the volume on his music player a notch louder and the voices outside faded into mush.

“Has anyone ever told you yourmmumblbe mbumble mubmle?”

Shinji turned down the volume on his music player and pulled out one earbud. Kaworu- hair slightly more mussed than usual, but still smiling curiously- was standing above him, looking down at him curiously. 

“Uh… I’m sorry, could you please repeat that?”

“Has anyone ever told you your default face is sad?” Kaworu sat down next to Shinji and leaned back against a particularly gigantic tuba case. Shinji noted dully that they were close enough that he could easily lean against him, slump into him. The thought seemed somewhat inviting. He brushed it off as the delusions of a tired mind and said, “Hm? You’re late.”

“Slept in.” Kaworu yawned. “Your default face is sad.” 

And there was another one of those intense looks, as if Kaworu’s eyes were speaking to him the volumes that his mouth would not say. Which would be a lot, probably, since Kaworu’s mouth said a lot. Kind of constantly. So if there was more shared in their brief but intense bouts of eye contact than there was to be said, then surely there were secrets of the universe locked up in Kaworu’s eyes and spilling out into Shinji’s with reflected light. 

“I… I’m sorry. I just…”

“You shouldn’t apologize,” said Kaworu quickly. “I just wanted to know. Did you know you look sad all of the time?” 

“I’m not sad all of the time,” said Shinji. “I, uh. I don’t think so? I’m just a little down today is all.”

Kaworu nodded towards the group of musicians with suitcases and instrument cases who were leaving through the music room’s side door. “Does it still bother you?”  
Shinji shrugged, wondering if his moods were always so transparent to everybody. “Yes,” he admitted. “I’m sure I’ll get over it, but. It’s a little annoying to see everyone who did better than I did, and see them all being so nonchalant like it’s nothing… I mean I suppose that’s how I would act too. Except for Asuka of course, she’s probably been the opposite of nonchalant. But that’s Asuka for you…” He gave a nervous laugh.  
Kaworu smiled at him. “It’s funny, I’ve barely spoken to this Asuka character and yet I feel like I know her so well already.”  
She wasn’t so simple as that, Shinji reminisced.  
“You’ve got, uh. A bit of hair poking up. Right there in the back.” He reached for the fluffy mess. “Um. it’s right…” 

“Go on, smooth it out for me,” said Kaworu. Nervously, Shinji smoothed out the protruding patch of hair best that he could. Kaworu’s hair was very soft.

"Um, there. I think that’s a bit better.” Shinji drew back. Kaworu smiled at him, and he tentatively smiled in return. And reflected on what a nice smile Kaworu had. What a nice face. He changed the subject. “So how are you, Kaworu?”

Kaworu shrugged. “I think I’m happy,” he said. “And that’s enough for me, really.”  
This was about as close as Kaworu ever ventured into his own personal life. Shinji felt awkward about it sometimes: that they only ever discussed his life- it seemed like an unbalanced conversation, an unbalanced way to spend a friendship. 

So he pressed on, saying, “You said you overslept.”

Kaworu nodded. “Oh yes. I stayed up much too late working on, ah, a project.”

“What project?” asked Shinji. “Like one for school, or…?”

“Oh, a pet project of my own, actually. I’m writing a piano concerto.”

A piano concerto! thought Shinji. So Kaworu was a composer as well as a pianist. 

“Really! Tell me about it. I mean, if you don’t mind, if you’re okay with…”

“I’m almost done with it, I think,” Kaworu responded. “I’ve been working on it for about a year now, on and off, when I’ve had the time.”

“Have you been composing for long?” asked Shinji. 

“I’ve played piano since I was very small, and always made up songs to play on the piano, but I never started composing seriously until a few years ago- and this is my first composition of any merit.” He seemed… shy? Nervous? To talk about this. 

“I’m sure it’s fantastic,” Shinji told him. “I can’t wait to hear it.” He suddenly wondered what it would be like to hug his friend.  
The bell rang, and Shinji disentangled himself from the brass instruments that seemed to have swallowed him up. The two of them walked to class, talking and chatting. Suddenly the whole orchestra thing didn’t bother him so much. Suddenly it was mostly okay. 

Kaworu joined Shinji and Rei again for lunch that day, and they spent it in what Shinji decided definitely constituted a companionable silence. It was a companionable silence, right? It wasn’t an awkward silence or just a normal silence. 

Shinji was pretty sure it was companionable. Unless everyone was just sitting there trying to eat their damn lunches in peace and going “god, what a pretentious and desperate asshole that guy is for trying to romanticise our damn lunch into a “companionable silence”. I mean how stupid do you have to even be. Obviously we don't want to talk to each other because none of us enjoy hearing each other speak.” He was pretty sure it was really a companionable silence. But he wouldn't ask. Because then he would be breaking the silence. 

Orchestra class was an unusually relaxed affair. A substitute teacher sat in for the class in lee of the real teacher who had gone with the honors orchestra. The class sat around, in chairs and on the floor, gathered in small groups and chatting about whatever the day’s gossip was. Shinji listened to music on his headphones and read a book, feeling unneededly pretentious. This wasn't pretentious, right? It wasn't like he derived any great sense of superiority from reading and isolating himself from his peers. It was more that... well, he didn't really want to talk to them.  
It was always awkward, and it always went like this: 

He would walk up to a cluster of acquaintances, all of them engaged in conversation. He'd linger on the outside, feeling like a moon orbiting their planet of socialization. 

One of them would notice him and wave. Oh hi there, Shinji! 

Shinji would nod and try to manage a greeting back, but it would garble and be cut off. A factory defect in the systematic manufacturing of small talk. It seemed his pleasantries came out defective. 

Shinji would try his hardest to keep up with the conversation, but it was always about what happened at someone's house last Saturday or who did what. It was like trying to improvise in an alien key. With nothing to say, he'd slink away. 

And on days he was tired, like today, he would give up. The music prevented him from hearing the others; the book prevented him from seeing them. He could stop thinking about them this way. About how happily their words mingled. How their voices harmonized into lilting dissonant chaos, and: how if they were alone, they didn't show it. 

The book was a thick tome of music theory that his teacher had suggested. It wasn't holding his attention: all the chords were slipping away from him; all the fifths and sixths and sevenths fell through his fingers like sand. 

He thought of Kaworu and how he had looked that morning: how his wispy hair had filtered the harsh fluorescent lighting into a gentle glow, of his tired smile. Both of them, sitting in the haphazard pile of cases, leaning into the black plastic and wood. It had made the morning more bearable: a pretty picture in his mind that he could superimpose over a math classroom or an angry looking test to make it more bearable.

Shinji closed his eyes then, letting the book pages slip past his thumb as the spine went slack. Now there was nothing but the music. The symphony was the only thing now: the deep soft bed of strings flowing as a river; the textures of the woodwinds; the throaty cries of the brass; the deep rumble of the timpani; and on top of it all, a piano that danced with an unearthly light-footed wildness. 

Shinji barely noticed when the bell rang and the others dispersed, to go home or to catch another after school activity. His headphones had a funny way of making a bubble that blocked out the rest of the world. 

The final movement ended with flourishes and stings as the music struggled, reluctant to let go: a crescendoing finale that left imprints in his mind the way a flashing light will linger in one's vision. 

Blearily, Shinji wrapped his headphones neatly around his music player (they would become tangled later, of course) and  
surveyed the empty room. 

"Shinji!" Kaworu sat at the piano. "I was waiting for you." 

Shinji grinned in spite of himself. Kaworu grinned back, and the smile filled Shinji with a reckless sort of glee. 

"Come sit down next to me." 

Shinji obeyed. Kaworu began to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some Bach in brass:  
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rHENkpzjCjI  
> aaaaaaand some indie pop! why not? https://sunshinefaces.bandcamp.com/track/teenage-prayer-2


	5. chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> um

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is way too short- I might try to get another one up soon.   
> anyway hello fire drills and also cold weather.

Winter never relented. Day after day after week after week, frost seeped into every corner, dirty snow stagnated on streets, and bitter air lingered sharp and crisp in lungs wrapped in shivering ribcages wrapped in dense layers of coats. People kept their eyes cast downward, bundles of wool and leather and polyester pulled rigid around brisk gaits. Outdoors was permanently grey and cloudy. Lazy doses fell regularly, but it was only cold wet dust.

Shinji found himself in a routine: leave the apartment each morning, preferably looking somewhat presentable, and with belongings intact. Then, Kaworu, in the music room. Then, classes. Then, Kaworu, at lunch. Then, more classes. Then, Kaworu after school. He measured each day in shared laughs, in music, in familiar tunes tapped out on piano, in chords and in careless smiles. It was good to have a friend, Shinji decided one day, very good. It was an unfamiliar feeling, but not an unwelcome one. He felt braver just thinking it.

"You're pathetic," Asuka wasted no time in informing him. "You finally find a friend, and you cling to the guy like a parasite. That's not how normal people act, you know. Normal people have more than one friend. He probably hates you by now."

Shinji didn't respond. Every day, a small part of him expected: "Ugh, could you stop being so clingy?" Or: "Listen, don't you have any other friends?" Or a half-hearted excuse not to hang out anymore, or for Kaworu to quickly surround himself by some of the loud talkative students whose conversations Shinji could never quite infiltrate.

But Kaworu never seemed to do any of these things.

 

It was in the middle of an especially mundane math class that alarms began suddenly blaring and Shinji found himself swept up among the tide of evacuating students flooding down stairwells. In the nearby courtyard, all was chaos: students milled around, shuffling into close circles to keep out the cold, or ran to find their friends. And meanwhile, the ever-incessant beeping of the fire alarm, peppered by conversation: _I'm so glad I don't have to take that calc test, I wasn't prepared at all and Ugh I hope there's not a real fire, were we supposed to have a drill today_? and _Let's sneak off and grab lunch somewhere/ Do you think [[[[[]]]]]] can get us off campus?/Last time you and [[[[[]]]]] ended up just sneaking through those_

The alarms' blaring bored into Shinji's skull. He didn't like alarms much, or loud noises, or fires or things that caused alarms to make noises. NERV had had alarms like this, or at least had years ago the last time he'd been, before people had started saying _Dammit Ikari you can't just bring your kid here, not after... not after..._ and then some vague distressed hand gestures.

He didn't like alarms. They were loud, percussive against the inside of his skull, unwelcome and incessant. Their school's fire alarm in particular, consisted two droning tones at a half step interval, played on top of each other at an intermittent quarter-note beat. The blare struggled in its dissonance, grating and scraping against itself, the two tones crying out to be freed.

The alarms were much softer here at the edge of the courtyard, and by the time the sound reached Shinji, their edge had been blurred and rubbed away by the wind and the chatter of voices. He found a spot at the edge of the assigned fire evacuation area, and sat down, wondering if he could make himself small enough that the winter wind wouldn’t notice him and would pass him over. Shinji wished desperately for his music player and earbuds, but he hadn't had time to retrieve them-or his bag- or his jacket- as his entire math class had scrambled for the door. If he had his music player right now, he could be listening to Chopin, Schubert, Rachmaninoff… But he didn’t, and it was only the cold hard concrete, the sad-looking plants, and the stained brick walls echoing back the uncaring alarm. The little bubbles in which the other students gathered shifted, compressing, condensing, following some complicated social algorithm at which Shinji could only guess. A group stood a few feet away from Shinji, who absorbed the graceful cadence of their voices. All harmonious, as one: all connected by the invisible thread of the past.

_Remember that time when [[[[[]]]]]] made everyone crepes and they were messy and fell part in our hands? But they were so good… /Yes/ I miss that/ Remember that book that [[[[[]]]]] kept in the passenger seat of his car?/ Ugh, don’t remind me/ Every time we went to [[[[[]]]]] after school I read aloud from it/ You’re so disgusting! Ugh!/ Hey remember when you got all offended because [[[[[]]]]] and [[[[[[]]]]]] and [[[[[[]]]]]] and i were…_ And it continued.

Shinji stared at his shoes, which were beginning to wear at the toes. What was it like to be part of a big group like that? He imagined it must be overwhelming, to have so many friends, all those different lives to be a part of. He had Rei. He had… well, he supposed he had Kaworu. He did, didn’t he? But of course, Shinji was only one tiny part of Kaworu’s large and surely wonderful social life. 

That was the only explanation, of course, for how Kaworu acted: that he acted this way with everyone. It was why, Shinji decided, he mustn’t rely on Kaworu's friendship too much- for fear of annoying him. Because Kaworu didn’t need him, probably. Everyone was always fascinated by the new kids- he probably had made a hundred new friends besides Shinji. Kaworu was probably in one of the big bubbles of right now, thinking about a hundred different things and talking about a hundred different people, and perhaps if someone asked him Oh, do you play piano? his mind would brush over a shy cellist with whom he sometimes made small talk. And it would mean nothing.

In his spot on the fringe of the crowds, Shinji drew his knees to his chest, hugging his legs. He was tired. He hadn’t slept much the night before. He couldn’t remember why. Shinji wondered whether Misato would remember to pick him up from school, and whether or not she’d drink that night, and whether or not Kaji would visit. He kind of hated Kaji’s visits. It was nothing against Kaji, it was just awkward and he always ended up hiding in his room (although didn’t he spend all his time holed up in his room anyway?) with his headphones turned up too loud, distracting himself with Stravinsky and waiting to fall asleep. If he had his music player right now, he could listen to the Firebird. And if he had his coat, he could put his hands in his pockets and keep them warm, and 

“Shinji!” The voice barely registered with him for a moment, but then his head snapped up.

“Kaworu.” The familiar shock of white hair, along with that angular face and even-more-angular body, lankily settled on the ground beside him.

“A fire drill, huh... I didn’t think it would be this bad!”

“What?"

“We were making smoke bombs in chemistry class today. They were supposed to have a controlled release.” Kaworu shrugged. “Guess they didn’t.”

Shinji blinked, and gestured to the displaced students milling about. “This… this was you.”

Kaworu chuckled. “Well. In a manner of speaking, I guess.”

"But... but... the whole school's out here now!" A siren blared in the distance. Another noise Shinji didn't like: sirens. Somewhere next to him, Kaworu's voice kept going, talking about smoke and fire and chemistry, about the chemistry class and the safety handbook and the sirens crescendoed louder and louder and louder til flashing lights appeared on the street across from where he was. Shinji shut his eyes to keep from looking: the vehicles' lights were much too bright for such a drab day, like bright paint spilled on a dimly lit photograph.

"Shinji, are you alright?" He opened his eyes. "Your... your hands are shaking." Kaworu's voice had grown soft. Oh. They were.

"'m okay," he muttered. "Sorry. I'm just cold." It was true, to an extent: he _was_ cold.

"Really?" The 'really?' was skeptical and concerned, but not condescending. Shinji closed his eyes. He considered running. He'd done it before-when everything got to be too much- just bolted. But where to go? The school was locked down. And outside? Only snow, blocks and blocks of snow, and an empty apartment, and his key was in his jacket which he'd left in the classroom. He felt trapped.

"Shinji?" He heard again. Kaworu's voice was soft and low. He looked up and met Kaworu's eyes, and they were full of deep concern as if they were trying to convey words too rich and full of meaning to ever be spoken aloud. Shinji found he could keep Kaworu's gaze, and that he could breathe, and that his hands had stopped shaking. "Are you alright?" Kaworu asked again. Shinji nodded, and this time they both knew it was at least mostly true. 

The alarms stopped.

The courtyard hummed quietly with activity, the occasional shout of laughter breaking the frigid air. The two friends sat at the edge. Shinji hugged his knees to his chest; Kaworu splayed out, back leaning against the brick wall. Both of them sat on the courtyard's concrete paving. Despite the noise and chatter, a companionable silence descended on their small corner of the world. The companionable silences he shared with Kaworu were nothing like Shinji had ever experienced before. They were not the tense moments before one of Asuka's outbursts, nor were they one of the sullen sulks after a fight; they were not the impersonal lapses in conversation with Misato, or the mornings she was too hungover to speak. The closest thing was the time he spent with Rei, but there was no warmth between them: only an absence, and an understanding he didn't quite understand. Silence with Kaworu was like a conversation with no words: it was a presence, a comfort, each basking in the other's presence, invisible _I'm here_ s. It was the pause between movements in a symphony; it was counting rests while the rest of the orchestra played. Or at least, this was what Shinji felt. Maybe Kaworu was just bored. Shinji supposed this was what proper friendship was supposed to feel like.

"Want my jacket?" Kaworu asked after some unknowable number of minutes, in which Shinji had brought his chapped hands to his mouth to breathe on them.

"No!" Shinji exclaimed, almost too loudly. "No, thank you, you keep it. You need it. I don't..."

"I don't mind the cold," Kaworu insisted. "Really- you take it. You look freezing."

Before Shinji could protest, he shrugged out of the sleeves of his coat and moved closer across the concrete pavement to where Shinji sat (their legs were almost touching).

Shinji felt, in mild bewilderment, something warm and comfortably heavy draped across his shoulders. The coat was too big for him, and as he put it on, the sleeves reached past his fingertips. It was still warm with body heat, and it smelled like Kaworu. Shinji inhaled deeply. Kaworu, now wearing a bright orange flannel button-down, looked pleased.

"Thank you," Shinji managed, "but. But won't you be cold?" 

"I told you, it doesn't bother me." Kaworu seemed to glow with satisfaction. "See, isn't that better?"

Shinji nodded.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is long overdue hello autumn. tried some stuff. idk if it worked! but! comments are appreciated, constructive or otherwise. seriously, I welcome criticism. I invite you to tell me what is wrong with my writing.

**Author's Note:**

> this entire chapter was kind of based off of the auditions process where i live. i hope i explained it well enough that it wasn't confusing to people who aren't familiar with it?  
> also I'm not exactly sure exactly what sort of AU this is. i don't really know if it's set in Tokyo or not, since I'm not really taking many cues from the canon in terms of setting. :/ I guess i'll figure that out as I go along!
> 
> also: typos!! every time i glance back at this fic i see more. i'll try to get them as i see them but if I missed one somewhere, please let me know! :p


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